The Holy War/Anti-War Alliance...

Walid Phares writes about the incredible alliance between the jihadists and the anti-war movement...

Theoretically, the jihadi connection to the antiwar concept is impossible. But in the realm of reality, it does occur, mainly because of the mutating "pragmatism" of both of the antidemocratic movements. The radical Islamists, as I argued in Future Jihad, have undergone a strategic mutation that has allowed them to coalesce tactically with ideological foes, among them Baathists, Neo-Marxists, and anarchists.

The last group, under an international neo-Left umbrella in the West, created the anti-war movement, which is reminiscent of the old Cold War Communist-controlled "peace movement."

Islamists found it easier to insert themselves as partners in an "antiwar" movement than a "peace" movement. Effectively, in the jihadi aqida (doctrine), seeking permanent peace with others is a non issue, given that jihad is constant, regardless of its form. Jihadism cannot accommodate a peace movement in principle.

However jurisprudence based on al Haja (necessity) would allow the jihadists to accept an interim cessation of war and work in more sophisticated ways to stop wars that they cannot win. Thus it is in the interest of the radical Islamists to stop a war that can't be won by them, at least until the balance of power is restored and a winnable war becomes possible again. They are against the West's war for tactical reasons. But they are not at all in favor of peace until they win.

In the case of the War on Terror, the "political Islamists" joined the "no war" crowd in order to stop the military efforts of the United States and its allies against the terrorist forces of the jihadists. Hence Islamic militants marched in the demonstrations against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a way to give respite to the Taliban and al Qaeda. The antiwar movement exposed its broken rationale when it marched against some but not all wars. It demonstrated against the military efforts to overthrow the Taliban and Saddam but ignored the wars waged by the Sudanese regime against the African peoples in the south and Darfur; it marched against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, but ignored the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.

Worse, in the eyes of millions of Middle Easterners, were the highly publicized "red buses" filled with antiwar militants who headed to Iraq to "support" dictator Saddam Hussein. They traveled from London, Berlin, and Rome through Eastern Europe without a word in remembrance of its struggle against the Soviet occupation, and crossed Syria without comforting the thousands of political prisoners tortured and assassinated by the Baathist regime.

And for an apex of irony, the buses rolled through sinister Halabja, a Kurdish town gassed by Saddam in 1988, and past the Shiites' mass graves, stopping only to "shield" Saddam's castles, built from oil revenues that rented the buses and lodged their occupants in fancy hotels. This antiwar movement was convenient for the jihadists, as it was a form of war against the rise of democracies in the region. For the movement, mostly bourgeois in nature, never showed up in Darfur, among Berbers in Algeria or Lebanese under Syrian occupation, or to shield women under the Taliban.

Hence it wasn't surprising for viewers around the world to see the Islamist militants in Europe taking to the streets alongside the "bourgeois Neo-Marxists" to protest the governments that supported the War on Terror. In Europe, the most revealing action of the Islamist militants was when -- in the same year as the red buses -- they marched in support of the French government against U.S. intervention in Iraq, and then burned shops and cars in 200 French cities and towns during a "French intifada."

The jihadi manipulation of the bourgeois-Neo-Marxist "struggle" has played a central role in the so-called "mass demonstrations" in the West since 2002, and the demonstrations themselves are an important component of the War of Ideas against democracy. On campuses, both in North America and Western Europe, the jihadi-antiwar axis has planted deep roots, and thanks to the skills of university-based anarchist groups, the jihadists have found a cover they can hide under, instead of simply becoming members of the typical Wahabi-contolled Muslim Student Unions.